As the use of computer has become increasingly necessary to increase efficiency in business, science, manufacturing, and so forth great efforts are being expended to make the use of a computer easy for people who have very little knowledge or interest in operating a computer or managing complex software.
The most direct way to interact with a computer is to write data or commands directly on a special surface, have the computer recognize what has been written and either record the data or perform the command. Such systems have been developed but generally require large memory and complex processing and are not suitable for use in small to medium size computers.
Generally, these systems must convert the symbol written on the surface to one of predetermined set of alphanumeric characters stored in memory. Although the features of characters stored in the memory are fixed and known to the computer, the features of characters written by human beings have many variations. Thus, the main problem for the system is recognizing which character has been written.
One standard approach is to define a feature set and encode a given character as a set of features. Dictionary entries are then stored for the given character. If there are several ways that users are known to write the given character, then multiple dictionary entries are stored, each encoding an ideal feature set for the given character. Storing multiple entries for each character increases storage and look-up time.
Accordingly, a great need exists for a more effective character recognition system.